Reducing the erosion of and enhancing the quality of soil in agricultural fields is a problem around the world. Every operation performed on the soil in an agricultural field increases the chance that the soil will be eroded or reduced in quality.
Over the last 70 years significant efforts have been undertaken to better understand and quantify the effects that various field operations have on the field.
More recently, these research efforts have extended beyond characteristics of the operations themselves to other factors, that, alone or combined with the field operations, affect soil quality and soil erosion.
One can now determine the soil erosion effects and soil quality effects of a field operation performed on a particular soil type, or performed at a specific outside temperatures, or performed on soil with a specific moisture, or performed on soil with a specific soil horizons or performed on soil with a particular slope, or slope length or curvature, or performed on soils with particular compositions such as percent clay, percent sand, percent organic matter and percent silt.
The soil effects of a field operation can be calculated based not just on the general type of field operation, such as tilling, crop removal, biomass removal, fertilizing or herbiciding, and harvesting but on numerous parameters of each operation, such as the speed of the implement as it travels through the field, the weight of the towing vehicle, the number of tires, the footprint of the tires, the type and spacing and shape of the ground engaging tool on the implement that engages the soil, the depth to which the tool engages the soil, etc.
The process of calculating soil effects of a particular operation is further complicated by the interdependent nature of field operations. The effect of one field operation will depend upon the effect of a prior field operation or a subsequent field operation during a complete crop cycle. Thus, the length of the crop cycle, the types of crops planted in the crop cycle, the previous field operations performed in the crop cycle, the future operations to be performed in the crop cycle, over the entire crop cycle are interrelated and may be beneficially incorporated in the process of calculating soil effects of a particular field operation to determine the total soil effect of that operation over an entire crop cycle.
Thus, to most accurately determine the effect of a field operation, one should first determine the types and all parameters of the many field operation throughout the entire crop cycle. One should also consider the climate parameters, the terrain parameters, and the soil parameters, all of which are a function of upon the specific latitude and longitude of the agricultural field where the crop operations will be performed.
Academic and industrial research is going on continually to further quantify and calculate the effects of field operations. For example, when corn stover is left on an agricultural field, how does its form of deposition affect the soil? How do corn stobs of various heights above the ground affect soil? How does the length of chopped corn stalks deposited on the ground affect the soil? How does the use of particular corn variety (as opposed to another corn variety) affect the soil?
Governments have been addressing soil quality for over a century by providing agents to advise and educate farmers on best practices. More recently, governments have required farmers to follow certain practices in order to be eligible for government programs, such as crop insurance or farm subsidies.
In the United States, for example, agents of the Department of Agriculture in every state will help farmers assess the impact of their field operations on soil quality and soil erosion. Certain programs require that the farmer submit a farming plan for his entire crop cycle for assessment by a government agent.
The farming plan the farmer submits includes a list of all field operations (e.g. tillage, harvesting, chemical application) that he will conduct over the length of the crop cycle.
In this plan, the farmer lists the field operations and all relevant parameters (the tool used, the tool depth, the tool spacing on implement, chemicals applied and in what concentrations) as well as the specific date and specific location (i.e. the particular field) upon which he plans to do those field operations. The plan is defined on a per-field basis. Any operation he plans for a field he will perform over the entire field.
The agent then calculates, over the entire crop cycle, what the total soil effects will be for the entire field upon which the farming plan will be performed, whether the soil quality of that field will be increased, decreased or remain the same, and whether the soil in the field will be eroded or built up and by how much. Based upon this analysis the agent will either approve the farming plan for that field and thereby permit the farmer to participate in a specific government farming programs, or the agent will deny the farming plan for that field At this point the farmer should consider the farming plan, estimate what field operations (and what parameters of each field operation e.g. tool spacing, type of tool, tool depth, etc.) might be causing the adverse effects, revise his plan, reschedule another meeting with the agent, and the go over his revised farming plan with the agent.
The preparation for each meeting may take hours on the farmer's part and on the agent's part. These meetings are conducted for each farmer and each field in a agent's territory since almost all farmers participate in a one or another government program that requires an approved farming plan. They also constitute a significant portion of the agent's work during certain seasons of the year.
The agent typically makes many simplifying assumptions when he calculates the soil effects of a farming plan.
For example, a typical farm field may be categorized as having between three and ten distinct soil types in different regions of the field. Each of these soil types are defined as having different soil parameters that make each soil type more or less subject to soil erosion or a reduction of soil quality by field operations. Thus there are typically at least three to ten different regions for which the soil effects could be separately calculated. Determining the effects of soil quality on each of these different regions could easily require the agent to perform ten times as many calculations for each field—one for each soil type.
As another example, the terrain of a farm field typically varies continuously in its slope, slope length and curvature as one traverses the field. To perform all the calculations necessary to accommodate the continuously changing terrain in a farm field could increase the required calculations a hundredfold or even more.
For these reasons, a agent typically simplifies his computations of soil erosion and soil quality when analyzing the farming plan for that field. One simplifying practice an agent typically performs is characterizing each field by its dominant soil type. If, for example, a field is 60% Type X soil, 30% Type Y soil, and 10% Type Z soil, the agent may characterize the entire field as having Type X soil for purposes of his soil effects computations, and thus permit the farmer to perform field operations over the entire field (all soil types) that meet the government soil erosion and soil quality requirements of Type X soil.
If Type Y soil is not as prone to soil erosion and a reduction in soil quality, the approved farming plan for that field prevents the farmer from more aggressively farming the Type Y soil, thus reducing the productivity of the portions of the field comprised of type Y soil. This is true even if more aggressive farming would not harm the Type Y soil.
Similarly, it may be the case that Type Z soil is very sensitive to erosion and reductions in soil quality. The farmer, by following the approved farming plan for that field, may be farming the Type Z soil to aggressively and thus degrading its soil quality and causing unnecessary erosion.
Thus, by requiring the farmer to follow a single farming plan for an entire field comprised of several different soil types, some regions of the field may produce less crops them they can sustainably provide, and some regions of the field may be over farmed, and the soil damaged.
What is needed, therefore, is a system for determining soil effects of farming operations as the operations are occurring in the field. It is an object of this invention to provide such a system.